Dataset Information

Changes in life history traits and transcriptional regulation of Coccinellini ladybirds in using alternative prey.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Ladybird beetles (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) are highly diverse in their feeding habits. Most of them are specialist feeders, while some can have a broad spectrum of prey. As a representative group of generalists, the tribe Coccinellini includes many aphidophagous species, but members of this tribe also feed on other hemipterous insects including coccids, psyllids and whiteflies. As a result, several species are effective biological control agents or invasive species with serious non-target effects. Despite their economic importance, relatively little is known about how they adapt to new prey. RESULTS:In this study, comparisons of the life history traits and transcriptomes of ladybirds fed initial (aphids) and alternative prey (mealybugs) were performed in three Coccinellini species. The use of alternative prey greatly decreased performance, implied by the significantly prolonged development time and decreased survival rate and adult weight. Prey shifts resulted in a set of differentially expressed genes encoding chemosensory proteins and digestive and detoxifying enzymes. CONCLUSIONS:Our results suggest that these generalists do not perform well when they use alternative prey as the sole nutrition source. Although their capacity for predation might have created an opportunity to use varied prey, they must adapt to physiological obstacles including chemosensing, digestion and detoxification in response to a prey shift. These findings challenge the effect of Coccinellini predators on the biological control of non-aphid pests and suggest the possibility of non-target attacks by so-called specialists.

SUBMITTER: Chen ML

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6958754 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Changes in life history traits and transcriptional regulation of Coccinellini ladybirds in using alternative prey.

Chen Mei-Lan ML Huang Yu-Hao YH Qiu Bo-Yuan BY Chen Pei-Tao PT Du Xue-Yong XY Li Hao-Sen HS Pang Hong H

BMC genomics 20200114 1

<h4>Background</h4>Ladybird beetles (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) are highly diverse in their feeding habits. Most of them are specialist feeders, while some can have a broad spectrum of prey. As a representative group of generalists, the tribe Coccinellini includes many aphidophagous species, but members of this tribe also feed on other hemipterous insects including coccids, psyllids and whiteflies. As a result, several species are effective biological control agents or invasive species with seri ...[more]

PMID: 31937243

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Project description:Plants use their roots to forage for nutrients in heterogeneous soil environments, but different plant species vastly differ in the intensity of foraging they perform. This diversity suggests the existence of constraints on foraging at the species level. We therefore examined the relationships between the intensity of root foraging and plant body traits across species in order to estimate the degree of coordination between plant body traits and root foraging as a form of plant behavior. We cultivated 37 perennial herbaceous Central European species from open terrestrial habitats in pots with three different spatial gradients of nutrient availability (steep, shallow, and no gradient). We assessed the intensity of foraging as differences in root placement inside pots with and without a spatial gradient of resource supply. For the same set of species, we retrieved data about body traits from available databases: maximum height at maturity, mean area of leaf, specific leaf area, shoot lifespan, ability to self-propagate clonally, maximal lateral spread (in clonal plants only), realized vegetative growth in cultivation, and realized seed regeneration in cultivation. Clonal plants and plants with extensive vegetative growth showed considerably weaker foraging than their non-clonal or slow-growing counterparts. There was no phylogenetic signal in the amount of expressed root foraging intensity. Since clonal plants foraged less than non-clonals and foraging intensity did not seem to be correlated with species phylogeny, we hypothesize that clonal growth itself (i.e., the ability to develop at least partly self-sustaining ramets) may be an answer to soil heterogeneity. Whereas unitary plants use roots as organs specialized for both resource acquisition and transport to overcome spatial heterogeneity in resource supply, clonal plants separate these two functions. Becoming a clonal plant allows higher specialization at the organ level, since a typical clonal plant can be viewed as a network of self-sustainable harvesting units connected together with specialized high-throughput connection organs. This may be an effective alternative for coping with spatial heterogeneity in resource availability.

Dataset Information

Changes in life history traits and transcriptional regulation of Coccinellini ladybirds in using alternative prey.

Publications

Changes in life history traits and transcriptional regulation of Coccinellini ladybirds in using alternative prey.

Similar Datasets

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